QA & Reg Affairs Unit

The Real Story of Aspartame Part Two

A story of Political, Government, and Corporate Corruption, Bribery, and Mayhem

written by Alex Constantine

At the FDA, Hayes used aspartame as a political statement that the Reagan administration was embarking on a grand voyage of conservative "regulatory reform," sluicing through treasonous liberal constraints on "free enterprise." Despite what one FDA scientist described as 'very serious' questions concerning pivotal brain tumor tests, Hayes eagerly approved aspartame for use in dry foods in July 1981.39 Three FDA scientists advised against the approval of aspartame, citing G.D. Searle's own brain tumor tests, because there was no proof that "aspartame is safe for use as a food additive under its intended conditions of use. "40

Hayes has since declined to answer any questions about his decision, which ignored the recommendations of the FDA's own board of inquiry. He relied instead on a study conducted by Japan's Ajinomoto, Inc.-a licensee of G.D. Searle. Hayes acknowledged in his 1981 decision that he had only consulted a preliminary report of the Japanese evaluation, and only *skimmed* it. More serious, Hayes violated federal law by basing approval on the test, as it had not been reviewed by the FDA board.41

Who is Arthur Hull Hayes? He was no disinterested bureaucrat. True to the biochemical theme of the aspartame story, Dr. Hayes served in the Army Medical Corps in the 1960s. According to the Washington Post, Hayes was assigned to Edgewood Arsenal at Fort Detrick, Maryland, the Army's chemical warfare base of operations, "one of a number of doctors who conducted drug tests for the Army on volunteers . . . to determine the effect of a mind-disorienting drug called CAR 301,060." According to a declassified 1976 report prepared by the Army Inspector General, Hayes had planned a research study to develop the mind-altering CAR 301,060 as a *crowd control agent.* In 1972, Hayes left Edgewood Arsenal, and a new plan for the experiments was drawn up by Edgewood physicians. The 1976 report notes that similar tests had been conducted before Hayes took charge. 42

Also at the center of the effort to land FDA approval of NutraSweet stood Donald Rumsfeld-"Rummy" to his friends -chairman of G.D. Searle upon leaving the Ford administration in 1977. Rumsfeld, the product of a wealthy Chicago suburb, was a Princeton graduate and a Navy pilot during the Korean conflict. He entered politics as a Congressional House aide attending night classes at Georgetown University Law School, which is closely aligned with the CIA.43

Rumsfeld campaigned ambitiously for Richard Nixon, who drafted him to direct the Office of Equal Opportunity on May 26,1969. He quickly established an office to spy on his employees in a holy crusade to flush out "revolutionaries" said to be granting federal funds to politically subversive organizations-a throwback to McCarthy's tantrums.44 Rumsfeld also figured in Nixon's notorious Power Control Group, spearheaded by Charles Colson and John Ehrlichman.45 Gerald Ford named Rumsfeld executive chief of staff upon the resignation of Al Haig. In 1986 he was named chairman of the Institute for Contemporary Studies (ICS), a neoconservative "think tank" (read: propaganda mill) established in 1972 by Edwin Meese and Casper Weinberger.

ICS has sponsored such opinion-shaping projects as a study of expansions in "entitlement programs" and their erosive effects on the economy, and a book on the uses of coercion by Communist regimes.46 Rumsfeld, at 43, became the county's youngest secretary of defense. For many years he has been a vocal proponent of chemical weapons.47 He is chairman of the Rand Corp.48

In 1988, he dropped a presidential bid, and was named a V.P. of Westmark Systems, led by past NSA Director Bobby Ray Inman. Rumsfeld was one of Westmark's founding directors, sharing the board with Joseph Amato, a former vice president at TRW (and a colleague of Inman's at the National Security Agency), and Dale Frey, chairman of the General Electric Investment Corp.49

Rumsfeld, a veteran political operative, was an adept at the vulgar art of public relations. He was recruited by G.D. Searle because he had "a Boy Scout image," according to one company official.50 A house politician was precisely what Searle needed to compensate for the damage done by independent researchers concerned about the toxic effects of aspartame.

In March 1976, an FDA task force brought into question *all* of the company's testing procedures between 1967 and 1975. The task force described "serious deficiencies in Searle's operations and practices which undermine the basis for reliance on Searle's integrity." The final report of the FDA task force noted faulty and fraudulent product testing, knowingly misrepresented findings, and instances of "irrelevant or unproductive animal research where experiments have been poorly conceived, carelessly executed or inaccurately analyzed."51

Richard Merrill, the FDA's chief counsel, petitioned Samuel K. Skinner U.S. Attorney for the northern district of Illinois, for a grand jury investigation of Searle's "willful and knowing failure" to submit required test reports, and for "concealing material facts and making false statements" in reports on aspartame submitted to the agency.52 Yet industry analysts, interviewed by the _Wall Street Journal_ six months after Rumsfeld's appointment as chairman, noted a rapid turnabout in Searle's fortunes as a result of his direction.53

Searle denies that Chairman Rumsfeld ever had any contact with the FDA, or the Carter and Reagan administrations, to lobby for aspartame.54 But the _Wall Street Journal_ article reported in 1977 that Rumsfeld "keenly understands the importance of a public image. So he has been mending fences with the FDA by personally asking top agency officials what Searle should do to straighten out its reputation." Westley M. Dixon, Searle's vice chairman, told the Journal, that without Rumsfeld "we wouldn't have gotten approval for Norpace," a drug investigated by the FDA in 1975.55

The grand jury investigation of Searle disintegrated in January, 1977 when the FDA formally requested that Samuel Skinner, U.S. attorney and a protégé of Illinois Governor James Thompson, investigate the firm for falsifying and withholding aspartame test data. A month later, Skinner met with attorneys from Searle's Chicago law firm, Sidley & Austin. Jimmy Carter ascended to the presidency a few weeks later. He announced that Skinner would not be asked to remain in office, but the outgoing Republican wasn't found wanting for employment. He informed reporters that he had already begun "preliminary discussions" with Sidley & Austin.56

G.D. Searle and Sidley & Austin are Siamese Twins. Edwin Austin, a senior partner in the law firm, was appointed to the Illinois Supreme Court in 1969. The Searle family drew upon his services extensively, and he taught Sunday school in Wilmette, a Chicago suburb, as did Dr. Claude Howard Searle, whose father cofounded the pharmaceutical house.

The firm is grafted to the beating heart of the Republican party. Morris Leibman of Sidley & Austin was for many years chairman of the American Bar Association's "Standing Committee on Law and National Security," a position that won him Reagan's Medal of Freedom in 1981.57

John E. Robson, head of Sidley & Austin's Washington office, was appointed executive vice-president of Searle & Co. in 1977, the same year Skinner was named a partner in the law firm. Robson, too, was active in Republican politics.

He was the first General Counsel of the Department of Transportation, and at the behest of Gerald Ford in 1975, chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board.58 He moved on to Searle, and stayed with the company until it was bought outright by Monsanto in 1985. Howard Trienens, a law clerk to the late chief Justice Vinson in the early 1950s, was a G.D. Searle director and worked for Sidley & Austin since 1949.59

Archconservative California Governor George Deukmejian joined Sidley & Austin's Los Angeles branch upon leaving office in 1991, and is reportedly making a "very comfortable" living. He has a keen "sense" for bringing in corporate clients, a partner in the firm told the Los Angeles Times, many of them past contributors to his campaign fund. Deukmejian's business connections have given him a reputation as a Sidley & Austin "rainmaker," but the L.A. City Council has questioned his ethics in promoting a contract with Sumitomo Corp. on a metropolitan railway project.60

Searle aside, Sidley & Austin has served some of the most notorious special interests in the country. The firm lobbied overtime, for instance, on behalf of Charles Keating's Lincoln Savings & Loan, and provided counsel on tax issues and dealing with federal authorities. The firm assisted Keating when Lincoln was foundering, and curried political favor to keep the S&L operating despite massive debts.

As a result, the firm was forced to settle with Lincoln depositors in 1991, agreeing to cover an excess of $40 million in claims.6l Sidley & Austin also represented the AMA when a group of drugstore chains sued seven drug makers-including Searle-for price fixing and antitrust violations. The lawsuit, filed in October 1993, amounts to billions of dollars in compensation.62

Skinner recuesed himself from the Searle prosecution four months before leaving office-asking, in a memo to subordinates, that the matter be kept "confidential to avoid any undo embarrassment"-a stall that nearly allowed the statute of limitations to expire. William Conlon, a senior U.S. attorney, inherited the case. He eased off, citing case load pressures, and gave a deaf ear to complaints of delays from the Justice Department, which urged that a grand jury be convened to prosecute Searle for falsifying NutraSweet test data. In January, 1979, Conlon too joined Sidley & Austin.63

The 33-page letter from Merrill to Skinner charged G.D. Searle with criminal fraud in its animal test results.

In 1984 Common Cause asked Dan Reidy of the U. S. attorney's office how the investigation had stalled. Reidy replied that because it was a grand jury investigation, he was "bound by law to secrecy." A Searle spokesman exploited the demise of the grand July claim that there was "no validity to the charges, that the company had been "exonerated." Philip Brodsky, an investigator for the FDA, expressed surprise that Searle hadn't been indicted. "I thought surely they would prosecute them," he said.64

Eleven years later Senator Metzenbaum issued a press release charging Skinner with stalling the criminal investigation as he prepared to decamp from office. Metzenbaum and his staff demanded an FBI investigation of Skinner's mishandling of the case. In December 1988, the conflict-of-interest bombshell blew up in the face of newly elected George Bush, who was about to appoint Skinner to the position of Transportation Secretary.65

Like most of the Machiavellians in the NutraSweet story, Samuel Knox Skinner kept company with hard right Republicans. He entered politics as a campaign volunteer for Barry Goldwater. 66 In 1975, he was appointed to Federal Prosecutor in Chicago by President Ford. Sidley & Austin promoted him to senior partner after only one year with the firm. Skinner was the director of George Bush's presidential campaign in Illinois. On occasion he was berated for his involvement with the state's Republican apparatus.

In 1987, for instance, the Chicago Sun Times linked him with a clutch of lawyers close to Governor Thompson, who were awarded lucrative assignments handling the affairs of financially crippled insurance companies. Skinner was a leading light of the Illinois Fraud Prevention Commission -he targeted welfare cheats (as opposed to white-collar criminals in the drug industry)-and President Reagan's Commission on Organized Crime. In December 1991, he left Transportation to take the position of President Bush's Chief of Staff.67

"A Shocking Story"

Had Skinner pressed on with the investigation, aspartame's manufacturer would have been forced to explain a long history of fabricated laboratory tests and slippery dealings with federal regulators, not to mention the public.

Dr. Alexander Schmidt, a former FDA commissioner, said of the original Aspartame Task Force investigation: "What was discovered was reprehensible. . .incredibly sloppy science." A 1980 public board of inquiry opined that the company's testing procedures were "bizarre."68

Searle's decision to market aspartame culminated with the falsification of test results to obtain FDA approval . In November 1969, officials of the firm hired Dr. Harry Waisman, a researcher for the University of Wisconsin, to test for brain damage in rhesus monkeys. Seven monkeys were fed aspartame for periods up to one year. In the end, though, the evaluation flopped because the technicians failed to perform the intelligence tests and autopsies required to determine brain damage.

When questioned about the false data by the FDA, Searle officials claimed to have had no direct control over the study. But the protocol for the study was written by a Searle pathologist *after* it had begun. And, according to Dr. Gross, "Frequent high-level communications took place between Searle executives and Dr. Waisman prior to and during the study." 69

To make matters worse, Dr. Waisman died unexpectedly in March, 1971, in mid-study.

Searle submitted the toxicity test to the FDA on October 12, 1972. It bore Dr. Waisman's name as coauthor. Richard Merrill noted: "Dr. Waisman was the expert in the field and his name would carry great weight," but complained to Skinner that Searle took "great literary license" in drafting the report, "which *covers up* the admitted inadequacy of the design, control and documentation of this study." 70

Searle submitted some 150 test reports, yet Dr. Martha Freeman of the FDA Bureau of Drugs noted in a 1973 memo, "the information provided is inadequate to permit an evaluation of the potential toxicity of aspartame." 71 The FDA task force set up by Dr. Schmidt in 1975 reviewed 25 studies on seven products manufactured by G.D. Searle, a total of 500 pages and 15,000 exhibits.72

Searle was held to be the author of "reports that the FDA believes contain false information" and "concealed facts resulting from having drafted Dr. Waisman's 'pilot' monkey study so that it would *appear* to be a valid, thorough scientific study," and not a forgery.

In 1975 Searle submitted a battery of cancer test results entitled "The Willigan Report, which contained a statistical table that excluded four malignant mammary tumors detected by Dr. Willigan and incorporated in his data.

The malignancies were made to appear benign. Searle dismissed the misrepresentation as a computer "programming error" undetected by supervising statisticians. Dr. Gross interviewed all concerned with the tests. He concluded in a statement to Metzenbaum's committee in August, 1985, that "to accept the Searle explanation is to believe that the unfavorable mammary malignancy data were innocently omitted from the summary table four separate times by three different individuals."74

The Waisman and Willigan Reports were prepared by Searle Labs, as were 88% of the safety evaluations conducted by 1981.75 They are typical of the shoddy documentation upon which FDA Commissioner Hayes based his decision that aspartame does not constitute a public health risk. Although two members of the 1975 task force considered the tests to be criminal frauds, Hayes and Searle declared the results valid.

In an appeal to Hayes' decision, James Turner said: "The entire argument, that since the studies are no longer considered fraudulent *by FDA* they are therefore scientifically valid is an example of a rhetorical shell game that, if successful, can only bring discredit and ridicule on the FDA."76

Dr. Gross, the chief scientist on the FDA task force, told the CBS *Nightly News* staff in January, 1984, that Searle made "*deliberate* decisions" to cloak the toxic effects of aspartame. "They took great pains to camouflage these shortcomings of the study,'' Gross said, "as I say, filter and just present to the FDA what they wished the FDA to know. And they did other *terrible* things.

For instance, animals would develop tumors while they were under study-well, G.D. Searle would *remove these tumors from the animals*," surgically masking the cancerous effects of aspartame.77 Yet one 1986 New England Journal of Medicine article claimed that noncompulsive aspartame intake has "no sinister effects."

Dr. Woodrow Monte told CBS, "Every time a truly impartial team of scientists have looked at NutraSweet, it has been turned down." Dr. Monte, director of the nutrition laboratory at Arizona State University, held that these studies "show *extreme* dangers over the long term."78 Dr. Monte was rewarded for his comments by a fusillade from the press. On February 23, Dan Dorfman, a business news reporter for WCBS in New York, broke a story that several CBS employees had invested in options on NutraSweet that pay off if the stock price drops.79

Dr. Monte and his attorney had purchased the options as well. It emerged that the CBS staffers had purchased the options on the advice of stock market newsletters printed prior to the nightly news report. The investments were not illegal, nor did they reap a profit. Searle's stock was not affected by the publicity, and the investors took a loss.

Nevertheless, the _Wall Street Journal_ ran a front-page story condemning the "inside trading." Reed Irvine's Accuracy in Media picked up the cudgel against Dr. Monte and the CBS employees as if they'd committed a shocking Wall Street swindle.80

Accuracy in Media, formed in 1969, is an intelligence operation abetted by the CIA. The rabidly right-wing organization was co-founded by Bernard Yoh, a counter-insurgency adviser under the notorious Edward Landsdale in Vietnam, and a fount of CIA funds to military intelligence units in the Delta region. Board member Elbridge Durbrow was once a foreign service "diplomat," and advised commanders of Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. Another AIM board member, Frank Trager, has conducted research for the Pentagon and CIA, and churns out pamphlets on international business and intelligence operations. Major financial contributors to AIM include Richard Nixon, "Bebe" Rebozo, Edward Scripps, the wretched Dr. Edward Teller and former Treasury Secretary William E. Simon.81

Accuracy in Media is a strident advocate of the chemical industry, which provides it with generous funding. The media "watchdog" has long waged a campaign on behalf of dioxin, denouncing the "Agent Orange scare" as the creation of delirious, anti-business liberals. Among the leading manufacturers of Agent Orange for the Vietnam war effort was Monsanto, preparing-at the very moment AIM took aim at detractors of NutraSweet[_TM]- to buy G.D. Searle.

The Good Stuff

Dr. Monte cautioned in 1987 that he didn't want to sound like a "conspiracy theory" hound, but the aspartame chronology clarifies its commercial emergence. The FDA Board of Inquiry advised against the sweetener on September 30, 1980.

On January 21, 1981-the day after Reagan's inauguration-Searle submitted "ten new studies." Dr. Monte was skeptical. "It is impossib1e that they could have conducted those studies in four months," he said.

"Obviously they'd previously done those studies but hadn't officially submitted them, although much of the information in those studies was informally presented to the board of inquiry." With the "new tests" in hand, Hayes acted as though critical, overriding evidence had proven the safety of aspartame.82

James Turner, representing the Community Nutrition Institute in Washington, D.C. (now Citizens for Health.Org), said that Arthur Hull Hayes, to arrive at his decision that aspartame is safe, fire-walked a path "through a mass of scientific mismanagement, improper procedures, wrong conclusions, and general scientific inexactness." Two FDA officials declared in 1985 that Hayes was determined to clear all obstacles to NutraSweet approval. One FDA bureaucrat reported that "people at the top" were closed to questions concerning the quality of the tests submitted by Searle.83

In July, 1984 a broad investigation of NutraSweet's adverse effects was conducted by the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control. Federal health officials said at the outset that they believed no harm would emerge from the data to indict aspartame. Robert McQuate, Ph.D., science director of the National Soft Drink Association, predicted with mystical confidence that the study would "provide further evidence that aspartame is a safe ingredient."84

Dr. McQuate didn't fret the goring of his biochemical ox. In November the CDC announced that no "serious, widespread" side effects had been found.85 It was "unlikely," said CDC officials, that "complainers" could establish a link between NutraSweet and their maladies-the same bromide once tossed to victims of radiation experiments.

The reported side-effects of aspartame fell into two distinct categories: central nervous system (65%) and gastrointestinal disorders (24%).86 Yet the CDC claimed erroneously that no consistent reaction pattern had been found. 87 Robert Shapiro, then president of NutraSweet, used the occasion to enthuse that the survey "clearly established the safety" of the sugar substitute.88 Nevertheless, the CDC recommended a new set of studies because aspartame users continued to complain of ill effects.

Based on the ersatz assurances of the CDC report, PepsiCo announced that it would drop saccharine and begin sweetening its diet drinks entirely with aspartame. The decision would have been approved by Wayne Calloway, then CEO of PepsiCo and director of the multinationals Citicorp, General Electric and Exxon. In 1983 soda bottlers, organized around Pepsi had petitioned the FDA for a delay in approval of NutraSweet for soft drinks until further evaluation verified its safety-interpreted by market analysts as a ploy to drive down the price of the sweetener.

They soon abandoned the effort to block approval (and all health concerns they might have had). "We believe saccharine is safe," Pepsi USA President Roger Enrico lied, but "we wanted the taste improvement." PepsiCo, already drawing on a tenth of Searle's 7.5 million pound annual production of aspartame, signed an agreement with G.D. Searle to boost purchases 500 percent.89

(Like other corporate pushers of aspartame, Pepsi has long maintained ties to the intelligence community. One product of the relationship was a Pepsi plant in Vientiane, Laos with a laboratory outfitted for heroin production. Alfred McCoy, in *The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia* documents the efforts of Richard Nixon to promote the plant's construction in 1965, and the CIA's continuing subsidization of the plant. McCoy complained to Pepsi officials that the facilities were but a cover for the importation and refinement of morphine, but it continued to operate unhindered.)

Yet another report was filed by Reagan's General Accounting Office in July 1987, this one on the FDA's handling of aspartame. The GAO concluded that the agency had followed proper procedures and conducted valid studies. But the report noted that the FDA had followed guidelines for food, not drug testing, despite the recommendation of the agency's own biologists favoring *drug* tests, which are considerably more stringent. This recommendation was overruled by FDA officials.90

MEDICAL NOTATION:

The center of the tumor may contain dead cells (or necrosis) surrounded by a rim of growing tumor cells and this surrounded by swelling, edema or inflammation, glioblastoma grow so quickly they outgrow their blood supply and the center of the tumor becomes necrotic.

A low grade glioma or astrocytoma may show only a low density area (pictured here on the right) whereas high grade gliomas (Glioblastoma) usually show more contrast enhancement or necrosis (looks white on the MRI or CT) as shown in the two images below.

Another blemish in the study was bared by Dr. Louis Elsas, director of medical genetics at Emory University in Atlanta. "They never asked the right questions about what it does to brain function in humans," he told the Washington Post. Half of the scientists polled expressed reservations about the safety of NutraSweet. One-fifth reported "major concerns." Monsanto quibbled in a press release that these critics had themselves never conducted aspartame research. A score of independent scientists have.

They found side effects.

Senator Metzenbaum berated Searle's flawed and fabricated tests at the August 1, 1985 Senate hearings. "The FDA," he said, "is content to have the manufacturer of aspartame, G.D. Searle, conduct these studies. How *absurd*."

He also faulted the AMA:

The Journal of the American Medical Association recently published a report on aspartame which, with some significant disclaimers, stated it was safe for most people. I wish that this report could ease my concerns. It does not. It merely restates the FDA position which relies solely on the tests conducted by G.D. Searle. As I have indicated these tests are under a cloud. In addition, the concerns raised recently by the scientists ... were not even included in the report.

In defense of the tests, executives of G.D. Searle argued that the sweetener has been approved by foreign regulatory agencies and the World Health Organization. But H.J. Roberts, an internal medicine specialist in West Palm Beach, Florida, reviewed the foreign studies and found that "the vast majority of these agencies accepted company-sponsored research without ever having done independent confirmatory studies.''91

Deficiencies in testing were aggravated by a lack of laboratory training at Searle. One of the pivotal safety studies involved fetal damage, but the FDA task force found that the medical researcher in charge was "inexperienced in conducting studies of this nature and yet given full responsibility."

They were appalled to discover that his sole credential was a field study of the cottontail rabbit for the Illinois Wildlife Service, yet at Searle he'd been assigned to laboratory training and supervision. When asked about his *curriculum vitae* in fetal research, he replied that he'd once attended a seminar on the subject, and the company had provided him with a stack of reference works.92 (Yet G.D. Searle, in its 1981 Annual Report, billed itself as "a research based pharmaceutical company.")

Corporate control of NutraSweet testing continues at Monsanto, torturing the ethics of academic medicine. In August 1987 the University of Illinois, a recipient of Monsanto's largess, issued a study exonerating aspartame of causing seizures in laboratory animals. Dave Hattan, a safety regulator for the FDA, responded that the study only confirmed the need for testing on humans. At independent labs, he insisted, aspartame provoked seizures.

Industrial support tends to contaminate test data. Dr. Elsas, in a 1988 letter to the New England Journal of Medicine, advocates unbiased review of clinical research. "The NutraSweet Co.," he said, "may have had an interest in protocols that would find that their product had no untoward effects." 94

Monsanto reportedly granted one NutraSweet researcher a $1.3 million honorarium.95 The same hired gun willing to manipulate lab results will have no qualms publicly defending a tainted pharmaceutical, like the diabetic specialist who objected that a Senate hearing on aspartame, which called him as a witness, might arouse groundless public anxiety.96

Victims and health activists have attempted in the courts to put a stop to the marketing of NutraSweet, to no avail. In 1985 a coalition of consumer groups were handed a ruling by the federal Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that the FDA had followed proper procedures in approving aspartame for soft drinks. A year later the Washington Post reported that the Supreme Court again refused to consider the case "despite critics' arguments that the product, sold under the brand name NutraSweet, may cause brain damage."97

Likewise, the medical establishment has thrown up an impenetrable wall to aspartame critics. Dr. Roberts, author of a brief study, "Aspartame-Associated Confusion and Memory Loss: A Possible Human Model for Early Alzheimer's Disease," found it impossible to publish the article in a peer review medical journal. This was peculiar, he thought, "considering the increasing magnitude of Alzheimer's disease, and the relevance of my observations to newer biochemical findings and avenues of research." He can "personally vouch for the *enormous* difficulty in getting published articles concerning reactions to aspartame products," a trend in censorship with "ominous overtones."

The options, Dr. Roberts says, are "generally limited to 'burying' the findings in a small-circulation journal (such as the bulletin of a county medical society), reporting the results as a letter to the editor, or (unfortunately, most often) discarding the project."98

"Sweet Talk," Science and the Citizen column, _Scientific American_, July, 1987, p. 15.
"Adverse Effects of Aspartame-January '86 through December '90," Current Bibliography series, National Library of Medicine pamphlet, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1991.
"Pepsi Switches Sweeteners-Aspartame Winning Diet Cola Market," _Washington Post_, November 2, 1984, p. A-1.
Mae Brussell, World Watchers #842, KAZU-FM, Monterey, CA., January 25, 1988.
_Moody 's Industrial Manual_, 1975, p 2606
G.D. Searle's 1981 _Annual Report_. Also, Arnold Foster and Benjamin R. Epstein, *Cross-Currents*, Doubleday & Co. (New York: 1956), p. 153.
Nancy Lisagor and Frank Lipsius, *A Law Unto Itself: The Untold Story of the Law Firm of Sullivan & Cromwell*, William Morrow (New York: 1988), pp. 13738, 163.
John Marks, *The Search for "The Manchurian Candidate ": The CIA and Mind Control*, Times Books (New York: 1979), pp.58,67 & 212. Marks writes that incapacitating "large numbers of people fell to the Army Chemical Corps, which also tested LSD and even stronger hallucinogens. The CIA concentrated on individuals."
John Peer Nugent, *White Night.- The Untold Story of What Happened Before-and Beyond-Jonestown*, Rawson, Wade (New York: 1979), pp. 143, 177.
Michael Meiers, *Was Jonestown a CIA Medical Experiment? A Review of the Evidence*, Mellen House (Lampeter, UK: 1988) p. 42.
Ibid., p. 43.
Ibid., pp. 42-43. For a sanitized account of Dr. Layton's career, see Min S. Yee and Thomas N. Layton, *In My Father 's House: The Story of the Layton Family and the Reverend Jim Jones*, Holt, Rinehart and Winston (New York, 1981).
National Council of the National Front of Democratic Germany and the Committee of Anti-Fascist Resistance Fighters of the German Democratic Republic, *The Brown Book: War and Nazi Criminals in West Germany*, Verlag Zeit im Bild, 1965, pp. 33-34.
Dan J. Forrestal, *Faith, Hope & $5,000: The Story of Monsanto*, Simon and Schuster (New York: 1977), p. 159.
*Brown Book*, p. 34.
Tom Bower, *The Paperclip Conspiracy: The Hunt for the Nazi Scientists*, Little, Brown & Co. (Boston 1987), pp. 93, 95.
Howard W. Ambruster, *Treason's Peace: German Dyes and American Dupes*, Beechhurst Press (New York: 1947), p.144
Nigel West, *MI6: British Secret Intelligence Service Operations, 1909-1945*, Random House (New York: 1983), p.92
Jaques Attali, *A Man of Influence: The Extraordinary Career of S. G. Warburg*, Adler & Adler (Bethesda, Maryland: 1987),p. 167.
Forrestal, p. 121ff.
Anthony Cave Brown, *The Last Hero, Wild Bill Donovan*, Vintage (New York: 1982), pp. 210211. Also: Ernst Hanfstangl, _Unheard Witness_, J.R. Lippincott (New York: 1957)
"Search for the Tiger's Treasure," _Las Vegas Sun_, December 26, 1993, p.1.
_Moody 's Industrial Manual_, 1968, p. 4080.
"Radiation and the Guinea Pigs," _Guardian_, March 3, 1994, p. 3. Also see, "Nuclear Scientists Irradiated People in Secret Research," _New York Times_, December 17, 1993, p. Al.
Christopher Simpson, *Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects On the Cold War*, Wiedenfeld & Nicholson (New York: 1988), pp.26, 152-53. Col. Pash, a former high school gym teacher, was an officer of the Office of Policy coordination under Frank Wisner. His unit, writes Simpson, "known as PB/7, was given a written charter that read in part that 'PB/7 will be responsible for assassinations, kidnapping, and such other functions as from time to time may be given it... by higher authority."' Pash was a member of the Russian Orthodox Church, a veteran of the Russian Civil War. Monsanto's Clinton Engineering Works in Oak Ridge became the Manhattan Project's headquarters in 1943, and was "manned almost entirely by experienced officers and agents of the CIC." See lan Sayer and Douglas Botting, *America's Secret Army: The Untold Story of the Counter intelligence Corps*, Franklin Watts (New York: 1989), pp. 71ff.,346.
Robin Thomas Naylor, *Hot Money and the Politics of Debt*, Simon & Schuster (New York, 1987), p.289.
"Statement from Adrian Gross, Former FDA Investigator and Scientist," _Congressional Record_, August 1, 1985, p. S10835.
Florence Graves, "How Safe is Your Diet Soft Drink?" _Common Cause_, July/August,1984.
Ibid.
"FDA Finding on Aspartame," _New York Times_, January 14,1984, p. 28.
Article in Medical World News,1978, cited in I .N. Love "NutraSweet Isn't that Sweet," _Gentle Strength Times_, October 1987, p. 3.
"Dick Wurtman's Ideas Aren't So Crazy After All," _Business Week_, December 14, 1992, p. 60.
"A Sour View of Aspartame ," _San Francisco Chronicle_, August 25, 1987.
"Amendment No. 60" (debate), _Congressional Record_, May 7, l985, p. S5516.
"Lobbyist's Cozy Ties with Ex-Boss Sen. Hatch Include Client Referrals, Political Fund-Raising," _Wall Street Journal_, February 18, 1993. Eli Lilly contributed $17,500 to Hatch's campaign chest between 1985 and 1988. Sen. Hatch filed a of friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of Eli Lilly in a 1989 patent case. Other pharmaceutical houses enjoy his political favors. Lobbyist Thomas Parry remains a key adviser to Sen. Hatch:- "Nobody gets better care than his former chief of staff," reports the _Journal_.
Ibid.
Jane E. Brody, "Sweetener Worries Some Scientists," _Science Times_, February 5, 1985.
_Who 's Who in Industry and Finance_, 97th ed., Macmillian (Wilmette, IL.) p. 583.
"Food and Drug Administration Food Additive Approval Process Followed for Aspartame," GAO Report B223552, June 18,1987.
"GAO Investigating NutraSweet Approval," UPI, reprinted in _Congressional Record_, August 1, 1985,p. S10823.
Graves.
"Head of FDA Tested Drugs on Volunteers," _Washington Post_, June 26, 1983, p. A4.
Austin H. Kiplinger, *Washington Now*, Harper & Row (New York: 1975), pp. 36-37.
Daniel Guttman and Barry Willner, *The Shadow Government: The Government's Multimillion Dollar Giveaway of its Decision-Making Powers to Private Management Consultants, ''Experts, " and Think Tanks*, Pantheon, (New York:1989),p.173.
Bruce Oudes, ed., *From: The President-Richard Nixon 's Secret Files*, Harper & Row (New York: 1989), p. 173.
James A Smith, *The Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and the Rise of the New Policy Elite*, Free Press (New York: 1991), p.282.
Sterling Seagrave, *Yellow Rain: A Journey Through The Terror of Chemical Warfare*, M. Evans and Co. (New York: 1981), pp. 258 "After a meeting with President Nixon, Representative Gerald Ford attacks politicians who criticize the Pentagon CBW efforts, saying the critics seem to favor 'unilateral disarmament."'
Christopher Palmeri, "Act Three," _Forbes_, October 26, 1992, p. 88
"Westmark Systems Expands Board, Hires 3 New Vice Presidents," _Wall Street Journal_, February 11,1988, p.33.
Graves.
Ibid.
"Hon. Samuel K. Skinner," _Congressional Record_, Congressional Printing Office, Washington, D.C., August 1, 1985, pp. S10827, S10835.
Graves.
_Congressional Record_, August 1,1985, p. S10823.
Graves.
"Critics Cause Bush Cabinet Search to Stumble," _Los Angeles Times_, December 22,1988.
Herman Rogan, *Traditions and Challenges: The Story of Sidley & Austin*, R.R. Donelly & Sons (Chicago: 1983), p.266.
*Who's Who in America*, 48th ed., 1994.
Ibid.
"Deukmejian Thrives in Private Life, Law Work," _Los Angeles Times_, January 3, 1992, p. Al.
"Chicago Law Firm Agrees to Pay Up to $34 Million in Lincoln S&L Case," _Los Angeles Times_, May 21, 1991, p. D5;and "Sidley & Austin RTC Said to Reach Pact," _Wall Street Journal_, October 31, 1991, p. B4. The basis of the suit was a memo written on May 10, 1988 by Margery Waxman, a partner in Sidley & Austin's Washington office, to Charles Keating. In it, she said "pressure" had been applied to M. Danny Wall, then chairman of the Home Loan Bank Board, "to work toward meeting your demands and he has so instructed his staff."
"Suit Accuses 7 Drug Makers of Price-Fixing," _Los Angeles Times_, October 15, 1993, p. Dl. Other pharmaceutical houses accused of conspiring to fix prescription drug prices included Smith-Kline-Beecham, Ciba-Geigy Corp., American Home Products, Schering-Plough and Glaxo.
Ida Honor of, "FDA Cover-up of Hazards of NutraSweet," _Report to Consumers_, Vol. XVIII, No.401, December, 1987. Also, "Two Ex-U.S. Prosecutors' Roles in Case Against Searle are Questioned in Probe," _Wall Street Journal_, February 7,1986, p. 4. Ironically, William Conlon won an appointment to the Illinois State Board of Ethics in 1982 (Kogan, p.359).
Graves
_Los Angeles Times_, December 22, 1988.
"Sam Skinner: A Pragmatist in a Storm," _Wall Street Journal_, December 6, 1991.
"Samuel Knox Skinner," _New York Times_, December 23, 1988.
Graves.
"Statement from Adrian Gross, Former FDA Investigator and Scientist," _Congressional Record_, August 1, 1985, p. S10835.
_Congressional Record_, August 1, 1985, p. S 10831, and "Statements from Adrian Gross," p. S10838.
"FDA Handling of Research on NutraSweet is Defended," _New York Times_, July 18, 1987, p. 50
H.J. Roberts, M.D.,*Aspartame (NutraSweet): Is it Safe?*, Charles Press (Philadelphia: 1990), p. 10.
_Congressional Record_, August 1, 1985, p. S108-28.
Ibid., p. S108-34.
Ibid.
Graves.
"Sweet Suspicions," three-part CBS Nightly News series, January 1984. Transcript reprinted in the _Congressional Record_, August 1, 1985, p. S108-26.
Ibid.
Raymond Bonner, "Searle Stock Query Held 'Smokescreen,"' _New York Times_, February 29, 1984, p. D5
William Safire, "Sweet and Sour," _New York Times_, June 1, 1984, p. A31.
Louis Wolf, "Accuracy in Media Rewrites the News and History," _Covert Action Information Bulletin_, Number 21 (Spring 1984), pp. 24-37.
I.N. Love, "NutraSweet Isn't that 'Sweet,"' in _Gentle Strength Times_, October 1987, p.3.
Graves.
"Complaints on Aspartame Lead to Nationwide Investigation," _Los Angeles Times_, July 5, 1984, p. Hl.
"Federal Agency Sees Little Risk in Sweetener," _New York Times_, November 2, 1984, p. A22.
_Los Angeles Times_, July 5, 1984.
_New York Times_, November 2, 1984.
"U.S. Study of Aspartame Finds no Serious Effects," _Washington Post_, November 2, 1984, p. A18
"Pepsi Switches Sweeteners," _Washington Post_, November 2, 1984, p. AI.
"Most Scientists in Poll Doubt NutraSweet's Safety," _Washington Post_, August 17, 1987, p. A23.
Roberts, p. 238.
_Congressional Report_, May 7, 1987, p. S5500.
"New Findings Back Use of Sweetener," _New York Times_, August 1987, p. 30.
"Researchers Differ Over Long Range Effects of Sweetener," _Los Angeles Times_, November 3, 1988, p. Hl.
Roberts, p. 244.
Roberts, p. 248.
"High Court Rejects Sweetener Review," _Washington Post_, April 23, 1986, p. C.
. Roberts, p. 246-47.